The "foreign agents" law is in retaliation toconforms with the United States registering Moscow-controlled RT Television by the same term.

In a move condemned by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, US and other foreign media will have to present themselves as foreign agents on all paperwork and submit to intensive scrutiny of staffing and financing.

The 2012 law, which had applied only to non-governmental organisations, has now been formally extended to non-governmental organisations.

... The Executive Committee of the Radio and Television Correspondents'Galleries shall supervise such gallery, including the designation of its employees, subject to the direction and control of the Speaker.

This so-called association, members inclusive, is an agent of the US federal government. US funds granted per annum to maintain RTCG operations unknown.

News that Prince Harry and his fiancée Meghan Markle will be tying the knot in spring 2018 hasn't been greeted with universal joy from the wider public.

A large number saw it as a chance to unleash on social media and hit out at the "millions and millions" that will go towards staging yet another royal wedding - while, for example, the number of people flocking to food banks reaches a record high.

Saying 'no one cares', Mitch Quirk added in a comment on Facebook post: "Millions and millions spent on another pointless royal event while hundreds of thousands have to use food banks."

One pointed out that the millions come straight out of British taxpayers' pockets.

The French government is to open a new cultural and diplomatic base in the heart of Edinburgh, reinvigorating one of Scotland's oldest and strongest foreign alliances.

France has taken over one of the most prestigious buildings on the Royal Mile, the former chambers for Lothian regional council opposite St Giles Cathedral, as the new home for its consulate and its cultural institute.

The move comes after serious discussions over whether the consulate had a future at all, with some concerns over costs, and it is hoped that the new site will be more economically viable. Diplomats insist the relocation is not a political statement in support of Scotland's demands for greater autonomy or independence: they say France shares the European commission's reluctance to promote the break-up of EU member states.

The last bit will cease to apply with Brexit. But I suspect that then, more Scots would probably prefer them to restore the dual citizenship for Scots and French, abolished in 1903.

The UK has bowed to EU demands on the Brexit divorce bill in a move that could result in the UK paying £50bn to Brussels, in an attempt to get France and Germany to agree to move negotiations to trade.

Non-stop behind-the-scenes negotiations have led to a broad agreement by the UK to a gross financial settlement of £89bn on leaving the bloc, although the British expect the final net bill to be half as much.

Worth noteing, Guardian alludes to a payment schedule it would rather not report, I suppose, anticipating an opportunity to dress UK demand for a "transition period" as a victory for "future partnership", or a PHASE II trade deal.

This [Sweden's Migration Agency] trend has continued in 2017 and 1,718 applications have so far been submitted, bringing the total since June 2016 to just under 3,000.

Not a trivial distinction on the arbitrage game board ...

Sweden first allowed dual citizenship in 2001, while countries like Spain still require applicants to forsake their British passport in order to be granted their new one. This has contributed to a comparatively a comparatively lower increase in applications. But Ireland received nearly 9,000 applications between June 2016 and 2017
[...]Germany's Federal Office of Statistics has not yet made data for 2017 available but 2016 saw an increase to 2,685 applications, up from just 622 in 2015.
[...]Denmark, also reported a significant rise, after Brits seeking Danish citizenship doubled between 2015 and 2016.

... duly noted

[Sweden] is still involved in a dispute about freedom of movement and personal freedoms.

According to the EU Rights Clinic, a UK-based association that helps people resolve problems to do with European rights, Sweden is in breach of EU law due to its "unduly strict" personal number rules, which govern how people access everything from healthcare to bank accounts. The so-called `personnummer' opens up private and public services but is only issued to EU citizens that can prove they will reside in Sweden for at least a year. But the case hinges on the fact that EU law says people should become eligible after three months [1][2].

If there's any attempt that in order to keep Dublin in the EU [!] that they're [UK TORY GOV] prepared to have Northern Ireland treated differently than the rest of the United Kingdom then they can't rely on our vote, because they [UK TORY GOV] have undertaken an agreement with us, our votes for their support for the Union. Their support for the Union there diminishes, then our votes will not be there.

It seems, Mr Wilson is unwilling, more likely incapable, of calculating the value of DUP "votes" since passage and litigation of the Repeal/Withdrawal Bill. The establishing purpose of it abrogated parliamentary ratification of A50 terms to UK gov. DUP support for it was punked by May and some of them may be just beginning to fear their "Cameron veto" is now obsolete, useless for purposes of coercing any PM to affect "independent" DUP rule of NI.

That was a flawed assumption on several levels of play with Downing before BREXIT. The pipe never gets to play the piper, does it.

At that time, not-Tory MPs constituted for the minority gov the barrier to any semblance of parliamentary consensus on the means to implement BREXIT. This reluctant coalition objected, in general, not to BREXIT but Tory gov patent refusals to conform to EU regulatory authority. Now that UK gov organs indicate UK gov has exhausted its miserable strategy to coerce the EU terms to its demands ("capitulated"), the reluctant coalition will fall in line to affirm Repeal/Withdrawal Bill's EU conforming amendments, thus obviating Mr Wilson's so-called "agreement" with UK conservatives. These potentates are a dull lot.

10 or more votes needed for May's BREXIT majority ("Union") can be bought from the coalition PLUS conservative Leavers. DUP will get BREXIT. The only motive for them is ensuring, as it always has been, Who is rules that pitiful province of Ireland?

French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe has signed off on the change in the voting system for the 2019 European elections, alerting several parties to the switch on Wednesday morning (29 November), including the leader of the Union of Democrats and Independents (UDI), Jean-Christoph Lagarde.

Transnational lists: possible but unlikely

European Movement France recently defended regional lists in an opinion-piece published on EURACTIV.fr, arguing that MEPs can be more effective on a local level.

BTW and strangely enough, Trump admin predictions of 3% GDP growth would seem to be vindicated by precious laws of economic resource allocation and several US agencies collecting objective output "gaps", if not Anglo-merican press resistance to "Trumpian" fascist dictatorship.

Square that circle for me. I'm fresh out of algorithm acronyms said to measure cyclical and secular supply and demand.

Installment #147, according to Keith, will be his last tirade against the Emperor. It's worth watching but I have long since tired of his endless optimism that Trump is on the way out. Au contraire! (How Frenchy of me.) First of all, the Emperor still has the nuclear card to play and that could lead to anything. Secondly, removing the Emperor while leaving all of his henchmen in place under Pence, could be even worse.

So I will stick to my guns, pop the corn while I watch things get a lot worse, and promote the secession of California leaving this fucked-up U.S. of Bullshit. Once that occurs we'll then have to deal with the Terrorist Group called Republicans. Won't that be fun!

P.S. Maybe MSNBC will get smart and bring Keith back in the time slot after Rachael Maddow. I typically tune out after her bit but Keith could keep my attention.

Nah, KO is a busted flush. All of that confected anger has ceased to have an impact, the delivery is just yesterday's news.

It was refreshing back in 2005 awhen there was almost nobody on TV saying appropriate things about Bush minor. But now even Scarborough makes a better fist of opposing Trump.

Anger is easy and I'm sure there are other who can dial it up to 11 with more conviction. but real forensic analysis requires a different approach than repetitive splenetic theatrics; Maddow is a different class.

And KO didn't get fired from every company, even when he was really popular, because he's an easy person to work with. Some people are just too much trouble and everybody has Keith's number apparently

And the "tax bill" (it was changed at the last minute with lots of parts not even typed, instead scribbled in the margins so hard to know exactly what it was) was passed 51-49 during the night.

It is, of course, an atrocity. Done in a complete rush by a regime that knows its main actors are about to be indicted (see Flynn).

So far the usual view was that US institutions were successful in their power checks. This shows how wrong this is on what truly matters. This will be a huge transfer of wealth to the super rich, coupled with a de facto destruction of Obamacare (the mandates are needed for it to work), that will be extremely hard to reverse.

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Gandhi

The House bill would reduce benefits for higher education by more than $60 billion in the coming decade. It would shock graduate students with sudden tax increases, punish student debtors, and force schools to raise tuition at a time when higher education already feels unaffordable for many students [...]

The most dramatic attack on higher education in the GOP House bill is its tax on tuition waivers. This may sound arcane to non-graduate students, but it's a huge deal. Nearly 150,000 graduate students, many of whom represent the future of scientific and academic research, don't pay tuition in exchange for teaching classes or doing other work at university. The GOP tax plan would treat their unpaid tuition as income. So imagine you are a graduate student earning $30,000 from your school for teaching, while attending a $50,000 program. Under current law, your taxable income is $30,000. Under the GOP tax plan, your taxable income is $80,000. Your tax bill could quadruple.

PhD students, who are effectively low-wage employees, already pay taxes on their actual stipends. The new proposal is that they'll also have to pay taxes on a whopping, make-believe "X" on their payroll sheet that's always exactly balanced out by "-X."

[...] the proposal would raise taxes by a few thousand dollars per year, or in some cases as much as $10,000 per year (!), on PhD students who already live hand-to-mouth-to-ramen-bowl, with the largest impact falling on students in STEM fields. For many students who aren't independently wealthy, this could push a PhD beyond the realm of affordability, and cause them to leave academia or to do their graduate work in other countries.

Really? The experience of the english class system over the last 500 years suggests that the in-bred upper classes decay genetically pretty rapidly, only sustained by their vast wealth and the intelligent middle classes who parasitize them.

Scant information is available about the situation of migrants in Libya, a country still in havoc. The US network CNN triggered a wave of condemnation when it aired footage ten days ago of an apparent auction where black men were presented and sold to North African buyers as potential farmhands. Low-resolution images, apparently taken at a market in Libya earlier this year, showed humans auctioned at a slave market for the equivalent of 400.

"legitimate asylum seekers": nuances of liberation?

"When it comes to Turkey, it is mainly refugees from Syria; when it comes to Libya, it is mainly migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa and the relevant international laws apply in different manners and the relevant UN agencies are different - the UNHCR on one side, especially in Turkey, and the IOM especially in Libya."

With about 70 percent of ballots counted, TV entertainer Salvador Nasralla was leading by a margin of five points, election official Marcos Ramiro Lobo told Reuters on Monday afternoon, by which time results updates had ground to a halt.

[...]

Nasralla is backed by former President Manuel Zelaya, who was ousted in a 2009 coup after he proposed a referendum on his re-election. The dramatic comeback by the one-time leftist risks fuelling concern in Washington.

[Randy]Credico, a journalistic contributor to the Flashpoints program on Pacifica Radio, was served the subpoena through his lawyer Martin Stolar in New York City. The subpoena was dated Nov. 27 and followed a request for Credico's "voluntary" testimony that he rebuffed. The subpoena demands Credico's appearance on Capitol Hill on Dec. 15.

A letter dated Nov. 9 from Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, in effect, demanded Credico's "voluntary" cooperation with the panel's "bipartisan investigation into Russian active measures directed at the 2016 US election."

The US Warfare State needs an enemy to keep the people in line and the government money flowing. Russia is convenient as the propagandists can riff off of Emotive-Cognitive structures in the average American's head placed during the 44 Year Hate of the Cold War.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

"They have turned a deaf ear to the demand of the European Parliament to phase out glyphosate. But they have also turned a deaf ear to more than a million Europeans who signed a petition to ban glyphosate and protect people and the environment from toxic pesticides."

EC has not published Appeals Committee vote result, much less by country, vindicating euractiv cynicism.

Thanks for that link. I always smelled a whiff of capitalist moral panic in the reporting about Zimbabwe's land distribution, but figured that a government as thoroughly corrupt as that of Mugabe could have messed up anything. "Widely variable, but with moderate gains for small farmers" is entirely unsurprising, and also would be largely invisible on too many economy development indexes which prioritize linkages with national and international markets over rural people eating.

As John McGarry, one of the chief academic supporters of consociationalism, put it in 1995, "the problem with integrationist solutionspolitical pluralism is that they require a willingness to be integrated, and no such willingness exists in deeply divided societies [TO APPLY EQUAL PROTECTION OF THE LAWS TO ALL CITIZENS]... Many blacks [SIC] in the United States are now [?] coming to realize, ironically [?], that the separate but equal doctrine in `Plessey v. Ferguson' is more attractive [!] than the separate means unequal [!] doctrine of "Brown v. Board of Education'." This kind of `realism' denies the common experiences of workers in capitalist societies as well as the opinion poll evidence in Northern Ireland showing consistent support for integrating or mixing in schools employment, housing and socially.

duh

While the Good Friday Agreement includes some gestures towards integration, the actual workings of government involve the consociational management of difference.

Consociational government aims to produce a kind of voluntary apartheid in which each 'side' chooses among representatives from its own political 'community'.

< wipes tears >
De-colonization of the mind is hard werk.
:: incidentally
Just last night I took up reading a dissertation "Egyptian and Italian Merchants in the Black Sea Trade, 1260-1500" (2014). I fell asleep on p 85 (of 471 pp), where the author still deep into the differences, nuance, and disambiguation of "slave" and "unfree" terminology, enforced by Arabic-speaking and Turk-speaking muslim peoples and disciples, or notaries, of the "Latin" and "Greek" ecumenical laws respecting "natural freedom." By region. Since Aristotle, but before the "Atlantic trade." hmmm.archived:Genoa 2009
"... fired by civic pride, religious fervour and mercantile enterprise"Genoa 2017

Last night, I endured lengthy discursion on regional buyer preferences, use, and gender properties of female slaves as pertains to common laws and litigation before falling asleep. At p 130 --nearly half way through-- I mulled suspicion: Why the title of this dissertation misleads the reader about a particular "trade".

Tonight I will suspend disbelief and resist every temptation to skip to the conclusion.

Finally, p 219, stepped into the political economy, the tar, binding medieval Black Sea commerce! Located a perfunctory and incredible statement that slaves were NOT the most important commodity, as no discussion of other stock, OpEx, investment, or bi-lateral trade agreements ensues.

The reader is to fault the Mamluks and Venetians for not keeping tidy records like the Genoese who taxed. This is also to pardon reliance on anecdote and subsequent dodgy empirical representations of vol and val. I anticipate much confusion in description, if any, of trade balances between colonies ("factors" as they were known to the Atlantic trade) and the several kingdoms.

From Caffa to Aleppo! Crimea!
I must say, I do appreciate the digression outlining the "Golden Horde" khan dynasty politicking and multi-ethnic constituencies, because fine distinctions between Mamluk turk-circassian-tatar-kipchak sultanates, khanates, and amirs controlling Genoese and Venetian colonies, ports, and supply/demand creation which emptied into the Mediterranean had challenged my imagination. Imagine my surprise to learn Uighur/Uyghur was the written not spoken language of Mongols before it was an oppressed terrorist minority in China or joke at the Al Smith Dinner.

At various junctures (of evasive moral turpitude) I find myself comparing this business to Time on the Cross, the massive Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World, or the most brief examination of Mycenaean riches, "Anatolian Women in the Linear B Texts. A General Review of the Evidence": slaves or economic migrants?

The Wuzhen conference, which until this year has had a primarily local presence, is designed to globally promote the country's vision of a more censored and controlled internet. The attendance of leaders from two of the world's most valuable tech giants lends credibility to China's efforts to influence the global internet so it better resembles its own [...]

Apple has come under fire for cooperating with Chinese authorities in removing apps that give users there uncensored communications. In November, Apple complied with government orders to pull Microsoft Corp.'s Skype phone and video service from the Chinese version of its popular app store. Cook used an earnings call with investors to justify such moves, saying it obeyed the laws of the markets where it operates [...]

Technology of the future should have openness, creativity and safeguards to protect users while providing privacy and decency, he added.

It's a goal that, according to Cook's Chinese hosts, can only be accomplished through more laws and regulations that control what can be shared online. Politburo member Wang called for a global emergency response team that would respond in times of crisis using new and undetermined measures. China goes far beyond censoring content that could support terrorists and criminals. It also blocks Facebook, Twitter and many Western commercial and educational web sites.

There is a wonderful ROFLOL reason as to why the Netherlands are not currently commemorating this. An entire organisation had already planned a centennial celebration, which would start this month and last for 2 years.

However, the female Speaker, Morocco-born Khadija Arib torpedoed the entire operation by succinctly and steadfastly pointing out that women suffrage was only accepted in 1919 - and that this should be the main focus of any celebration of suffrage, and most certainly not be the ending of one. Fumes and smoke, hot air and exploding heads could not budge her, and all the plans, including the Dutch king as guest of honour, were iced.

As the antipasti is brought to the table, the women talk in amazement about how so many female professors at Radboud University come from abroad. When it comes to the exact sciences faculties, they make up nearly 100 percent. `I really don't understand it', says Alessandra Cambi, Professor of Cell Biology in the medical faculty. `Dutch childcare infrastructure is so good! You can have kids here without having Granddad and Nan in the neighbourhood, too.'

Mariani points out an economic reason: due to poverty and poor social facilities, Italian women have traditionally been accustomed to working. `In the Netherlands, that isn't necessary--the salaries are high enough.' Elena Marchiori, Professor of Machine Learning, nods: `It is precisely in the less economically developed countries that you see many women in science.'

Prosperity may act as a ceiling for equal rights. There is a reason these five Italian women feel that part-time work a Dutch phenomenon: `Ask the Dutch girls in secondary school how many hours they plan on working later in life and they'll tell you 28 hours.'

That may be why there are more working women here (65 percent in the Netherlands versus 49 percent in Italy), but creating a career this way is certainly harder. Cambi: `Getting a top position by working 3.5 days a week does not happen.'

Yet that part-timer principle is deeply embedded in the minds of Dutch women. `When my oldest son went to sign up for university day care, I was told that a maximum of three days per week is standard and good for your child. After that, it is difficult to say that you want four or five days.'

due to poverty and poor social facilities, Italian women have traditionally been accustomed to working.

This statement resonates in their comparisons of differing "work ethic" between Italy and Netherlands yet doesn't quite strike the chord of class dialectic that accompanies, to my ears, stereotype of prosperity and "growth" within the USA.

When I reached a certain age, I became more attuned to the ways in which female accountability to and visibility (empirical and canonical) in the US the labor force is predicated on the vocal aspiration (there is only one :) of affluent females --formally educated or not. One might trust, for example, a ubiquitous assertion that women entered the labor market in the 1970s ... after a relatively long vacation from some sort of 3-year corvée event to support The Allied War Effort. That would be a mistake though.

Countless hundreds of thousands of females here, too, "have traditionally been accustomed to working" in fields, kitchens, laundries, mills (factories), and domestic "engineering". For centuries. For a pittance or none. Therefore my attitude to the fiasco so-called feminist revolution --"leaning into" leisure, consciousness, living wages, sex discrimination, paid leave that never materializes-- violently alternates between irritation and resignation. For whom, Qui bono?, prosperity benefits is a question that has yet to be answered by the will of the people.

Yes, but feminism had to start with the middle classes. And so naturally the inital statements of intent will reflect the concerns and issues that affect white middle class women.

But feminism is in a state of evolution, indeed feminism has to be about societal and theoretical evolution, else it fails. MeToo and BLM are both coming together to provide a new burst of progress in ideas. But, feminism is like any other form of politics, it's done by those who show up. If you don't like what they do, show them there are other ways

When an emancipation influx of women into the workforce depresses the job market so much that the modern-income family has it harder than a single-income family in the 1950s, how important is fair enumeration? It is arguable that a wife and kids had it easier when the husband was in charge of their welfare rather than the society and the market.

Elisabeth Warren alludes to that in her famous presentation "The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class" of March 8, 2007 (Youtube), particularly around 23:20-24:40, 26:40-27:20, 28:04-30:08 time marks.

Those were the best times ever, anywhere by then. It got still better, but the current progress is very debatable. Two decades after "It's economy, stupid!", a pedestal for (mostly) well established women is more or less a consolation for the progressives, is it not?

I believe you got that one backwards. Wages weren't depressed because of women entering the workplace, wages were depressed because automation robbed the workforce of the power of organisation. An atomised workforce is easy to control and threaten, poverty wages are the result.

The wage stagnation trend continued after Reagan and Thatcher regardless ideology... or variably "progressive" leaders. With new wild market rules in force, the doubly inflated labour mass had no power whatsoever.